An alumna of Clarion West Writer’s Workshop for science fiction and fantasy, I’ve written for markets like The New York Times and Time Out New York. Currently, I write about sci-fi for Blastr. I also edit the humor competition for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and here at Forbes.

A 'Guild Wars 2' Player Reviews 'Mists of Pandaria'

World of Warcraft (WoW) is the standard by which other MMOs are judged. But as it happens, I only just started playing MMOs, and I chose Guild Wars 2 (GW2) as my entrée. But WoW’s latest expansion, The Mists of Pandaria (Pandaria), was released today. With the help of Warcraft aficionado, Marco Lemos (who helped me with my article, “A ‘World of Warcraft’ Player Reviews ‘Guild Wars 2‘”), I spent some time giving the Pandaria beta a whirl, to see how it compares to my standard, GW2.

I can see the appeal of Pandaria. GW2’s lack of end-game material can give some players no sense of completion, and I can see where gameplay might feel repetitive after a few months. With multiple expansions and dungeons, Pandaria is, in the best possible sense of the phrase, a work in progress.

However, I ultimately prefer GW2. Here’s what Marco and I liked, and didn’t like, about Pandaria compared with GW2.

What I liked about Pandaria

- The starting level gameplay is incredibly simple—some would say too simple. But in Pandaria, it was much easier to learn how combat worked. GW2’s gives your character multiple abilities in the beginning, which were difficult to keep track of because I was too busy fleeing from centaurs. I learned quickly, but still, Pandaria is the better choice for beginners.

If I could rewind time, I would first buy Apple at $5 per share. And then I would have started my life as an MMO player with WoW. Only after that would I have moved on to GW2.

- The quest text and dialog are extremely well written, and they perfectly capture the right tone to motivate the player. Master Shang flattered me with, “Most of the other trainees have been here for quite some time, but you are able to match them even within this first hour.” These helpful prompts made me want to keep playing, and they really did give me a sense of attachment to my character—something that GW2 did not do.

- I was also more engaged with the plot. At one point, two of our companions fell out with each other over a turtle (<–vague spoiler), and their fight, though brief, made me feel like I was part of the story. The plot also moved along at a good pace.

- Raiding areas will have a staggered release date, starting today and going through November 6. This way, players can pace their gameplay. GW2, on the other hand, hasn’t breathed a single word about releasing new content.

Lemos, the more experienced MMO gamer, had this to say in favor of Pandaria:

- The monk class is well designed. Brewmaster tanking seems a lot of fun, with several amazing cooldowns (one that redirects 20% raid damage to the tank); mistweaver monks come out swinging with the ability to heal your whole group; and windwalker monks finally get to use those sweet fist weapons, like the Claws of Gekkan.

As with the Druid and paladin, you can choose whether you want to play Alliance (lightside) or Horde (darkside).

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It is true, WoW has way more end game content than GW2, I only hope that Arenanet gives us more dungeons to explore. Most of the people that are lvl 80 usually hang out at WvW or help their guildmates trough lower level dungeons, which is fun, but it is nothing compared to endgame of other MMOs.

GW2 is still a very young game, ANET still has no squash some bugs here and there before pushing new content, once they start selling more stuff at the gem shop it will be a sign that they are happy with the current status of the game and are ready to give us more stuff to play with.

Cool review of Guild Wars 2, but where is the review of Mists of Pandaria?

You really need to drop the bit about YOUR game paying homage to Assassin’s Creed while the game you hope to see fail pays homage to Farmville. That’s misleading, as well as just plain nasty and unprofessional. Also, it helps if you actually play the game you review beyond visiting the character creation screen and bemoaning the lack of customization. There is more to gameplay than throwing more polygons on the screen and giving you more body shapes to choose from.

If this is the quality I can expect, I will happily avoid your “reviews” in the future.

I’d like to point out that Alliance vs Horde in WoW is not “lightside” vs “darkside.” They may seem that way by appearance, but their backstories are far more complex. The only playable race that could come off as “darkside” would be the Forsaken, but even they can be sympathized for.

Good comparison otherwise. I absolutely feel that GW2 is the friendlier game and that’s why I prefer it for now.

You hit the money with the “friendlier” game comment, that’s definitely what I like best about GW2. People help each other in WoW, but the game doesn’t reward you for doing so. I thought it was very nice for GW2 to reward xp for helping other players. Also one thing that really pleases me is that multiple players can gather the same resource node in GW2, as opposed to WoW’s “omg that jerk just stole my ore >.<".

One major upside of WoW for me was the extremely smooth level progression. I loved the dynamic event system in GW2, but early on there were some very painful levels where I would be a few levels away from my next story quest, done all the heart quests around my level, and explored as much of the map as it was safe for me to do so, then for a few painful levels I had to run around my already explored areas chasing the same dynamic events I've already done many times in order to level up enough to safely progress further. This problem got better after around level 30 where I gained access to multiple maps around my level that I could quest in, but I felt leveling in GW2 early on was poorly designed. In WoW, there would always be more than enough quests to carry me to max level, all I had to do was to follow the story line.

Interesting article, and you certainly got some points right. I do think however that the main thing with WoW is the fact that it has been around for so many years, and the fact that you have not play it during vanilla made you certainly miss some romantic aspect of being a WoW player. Of course there is nothing wrong with that, but it is being reflected in your review, or I would rather say, opinion.

I have not try GW2 yet (the downside of playing on a mac I suppose) but I will definitely try it once it is made available to my OS. My sister have tried it though, and she told me that is a fresh and beautiful looking game. WoW however, will always have a spot in my geek top list, just like any other classic games of other genre like Street Fighter, Super Mario or the Legend of Zelda. And that’s my point. WoW is already a classic. Yes, the graphic is cartoony, but it is also what makes WoW iconic and different, where as almost every other MMO like out there looks pretty generic to me (don’t even start with Star Wars: TOR)

I think in the end, it will be unfair to make a huge comparison between WoW and GW2, because each of them is an awesome game in their own accord. They are just different, although both of them are MMORPG.

I suppose I have to disagree with small items in your review, although on a whole it was well written and enjoyable to read.

GW2 starts you off with a single attack power and within about 2-3 kills, reveals another. It makes this very evident on your screen and as a player, I took time to read it. This occurs generally during the starting quests which are slow paced and not very dangerous. By the time you are level 3 you should have a weapon unlocked and a secondary weapon. By contrast in WoW I will start the game with 2 powers (auto attack + another) or more based off the class. Within a level up or two i have 4-5 powers. In general, this stays very similar except WoW never stops. You KEEP getting more and more powers. In GW2 I have at most 2 weapons i swap between (not including auto attacks, thats 8 abilities) and 5 utilities for 13 total powers im managing. Thats by level 40 keep in mind. I was managing more powers on my mage by level 20 in WoW.

I agree with an imbalance in the quality of plots between races in GW2 but also feel this is unjust comparison. Your comparing level 85 plot and the new panda plot to all the starting plot of GW2. Plenty of racial plots in WoW were bad at early levels. The troll/orc plot was VERY tedious, as was the Undead Plot. Go back and do the quests for these early classes and its easy to see how bad they are. Most people get to 10th level and never do a quest again and just queue in dungeons strictly because that set of questing was so bad and the plot so dull.

I liked this article but one small inconsequential mistake just bothered me a lot. Horde aren’t darkside. That’s never been the lore, they aren’t evil at all. The alliance has more then matched them when it comes to atrocity or evil of any type.

i have played both of these games, WoW for about 2yrs then MoP beta, gw2 since pre-start. wow was my first mmo. first of all, the attachment to your character in the story, gw2 vs MoP; both games do very well as far as letting you feel included in the big story, MoP just the general overall big picture with your race and the game world, but gw2 goes one step further by giving you that same big picture, then also personalizing your own story that no one else knows, unless you bring them along.

but other than that, this article sounds like you may have just let this ‘Lemos’ write it for you, because most of the MoP info you put in it was after ‘Lemos said’ this or that. MoP used to have depth along with that story, but after i played the beta and the wreck they turned the talent tree into, i had to dump it like a bad ex gf.

oh one more thing; you also said there was ‘not even a whisper of expansion’ from gw2. the time of this article was 1mo after the pre-release release, of which i was part of……its been ONE MONTH…..? knowing your non experience with mmo’s, and according to you this being your first, i’d say you may have had time to rush 1 character to level 80 in gw2, completely skipping most of the huge world tyria is just to see max level. and most of your info from MoP was clearly from Lemos and not your own experience with it other than the beginning area, since it had just been released the day of this article.

this is really a shabby way to write an article, new at it or not. i thought forbes was a media-leading name. im not impressed.